My friend Amanda, who runs BreadandBadger.com, recently needed to make a change in her website. In her words,
“I was using a WordPress site with an e-commerce plugin. The plugin was always extremely glitchy, and only offered a small amount of features that I thought were really important for selling effectively…and wanted more control of my shop’s design, layout and user experience.”
I think this pretty neatly sums up the experience that many artists I know have with trying to build a website themselves, especially one where they can make sales directly from their site.
Finding the right website provider is a real challenge. I’ve written extensively about it and even I sometimes get overwhelmed with the number of options available. In the past, I’ve suggested many times to artists that they should own their own website with their own domain name instead of using Art Malls.
In some instances, it makes sense to use a hosted solution. Hosted solution is a term that web geeks like me use to refer to a website that is hosted on someone else’s servers. In today’s blog post, I’m going to talk about how to pick the right hosted solution for you.
As of right now, there are two hosted solutions I recommend: Shopify and Squarespace. Let’s dive in to why.
When Should You Use Shopify?
When you don’t want to handle web hosting or you want the technology part to be easy.
Again, in Amanda’s words, “Setup was very straight-forward. It’s a fully hosted site, so I didn’t need to futz with domains or install anything to get it going, like WordPress. There are a few free themes for Shopify stores which I think are more than adequate for my shop, and they are dead simple to change to your liking.
The customer support for my theme was excellent, and someone even helped me change the code to accomplish a few customizations that weren’t in the theme modification dashboard. I feel like Shopify* really cares about it’s customers, and I can get fast support for anything that comes up.”
(* = affiliate link)
I recently worked with a painter who is doing six-figures a year in online sales. He and his wife were doing it all through WordPress, and even though they had hired a developer to build the website, they were dissatisfied with the constant need to get the developer involved every time they wanted to make changes to the website.
The artist and his wife didn’t want to take the time to learn the relatively easy steps to make changes to the site in WordPress, so I suggested that she look into a hosted solution. Shopify ended up being the best solution for her and she is very happy. Her site has less down time and she has someone that she can call 24/7.
When you’re ready for a true ecommerce experience.
Many artists that I talk to have a weird mental block that gets in the way of their online success. They think that listing prices diminishes the value of their art. Big-time marketing consultants will tell you that at the high end of the art market, listing a price can scare off a customer before they have a chance to get attached to your art. My response is that if price scares off your customer, then they’re not the right person for your art anyway.
All of that is a long way around to say that Shopify is only the right solution for you if you are ready to present your art as something for sale, with prices included. Shopify is an ecommerce platform. If you’re not using it as such, you’re wasting your money (more on pricing in a bit).
When you want offline commerce integration. Shopify has a very slick smartphone & tablet application that allows you to process payments when you’re at a fair or other in-person show. It runs everything through the same payment back-end that your website uses, so you can manage inventory and taxes through one place.
Another sales-driven integration is the ArtPlacer plugins, these try-before-you-buy widgets enable visitors to your website to preview your art in their room by uploading a picture of the space, or directly on their walls with the help of Augmented Reality technology and the ArtPlacer AR Mobile app.
ArtPlacer has generously offered a discount for TAA readers. Go to https://www.artplacer.com/signup to start a free trial and enter THEABUNDANTARTIST promo code for up to 30% at checkout.
Squarespace
Pretty design. Squarespace is well known for having beautifully designed simple websites. Artists like Ann Rea use Squarespace, and I’ve set up sites for artists like Linda Handel that were then dead easy for her to change and tweak well beyond what I initially set up for her. Squarespace’s drag and drop design interface is very slick and easy to use.
Simple ecommerce. Squarespace added ecommerce after they launched. It works, but they only integrate payments with Stripe, which is a bit of a let-down. If ecommerce is not going to be a major part of your business, then this will probably work, but if you plan on making more than a handful of ecommerce sales per year, I’d recommend going with Shopify.
No access to code needed. You can access the CSS code in Squarespace, but if you want to make deeper structural changes, you’ll be disappointed by Squarespace.
Other considerations
Pricing. Shopify can become quite expensive once you move beyond the starter plan and start adding some of the paid applications, but all of the artists I spoke to about their Shopify experience said that they got started with minimal cost. If you don’t need robust ecommerce, however, Squarespace is probably a better choice.
Reliability. I’ve not seen any reports of recent major downtime for Shopify or Squarespace.
Search engines. Shopify and Squarespace are not perfect. Their URL structures are less than ideal for search engine effectiveness, but for the most part, SEO is not something that most artists need to make a priority.
Other hosted solutions.
There are literally dozens of companies that make websites specifically for artists. I’m not a fan of most of them. Their designs usually aren’t very good, and their underlying technology is mostly flawed. They simply don’t have the manpower to run the same level of technology as the big players like Shopify.
One exception is Fine Art Studios Online. While I’m not a fan of their designs, they do a great job with their technology, and they really have killer support. I would still recommend Squarespace and Shopify over any artist-specific website solution, however.
Picking a Hosted Solution over DIY
Over the years I’ve recommended WordPress to a lot of artists. I’ve even built a lot of WordPress sites for artists. I’m a big fan of WordPress for all of the reasons outlined in this blog post on Art Malls. It’s a great way to build your site to the exact specifications that you want, and to maintain control over your own online business. TAA is built on WordPress.
There are challenges to using WordPress though. It requires at least a minimal level of comfort with technology, and a little technical knowledge is really helpful. Also, it wasn’t originally built for ecommerce, and still doesn’t handle high volume transactions very well. That said, if you want a cheap solution that gives you total control, then WordPress is still my favorite option.
Must Read: Do check out our definitive guide to an artist’s website for further insights, The Ultimate Guide to an Artist’s Website.
I’ve designed shopify sites for creative entrepreneurs on a few occassions and I think it’s the best platform out there for artists. There’s even an app called Printful that you can use to outsource your printing for shirts, prints and other chachkies.
Hi Matthew, Im wondering if you have any examples of artists websites done with Shopify. I like the technology of this platform but I’ve yet to see some beautiful sites that make the aesthetics important too.
Great feedback shared here, thank you on both of these platforms!
mathewclayfreeman Thanks for the comment. I’m really encouraged by what I’ve seen. Which printers do you like for prints?
Cory what do you recommend as a best solution for Artists these days?
(who want to sell originals, print sales, and merch)
is it still shopify or something else? (base price per month is a little steep for starting artists I think)
CoryHuff mathewclayfreeman
PrintHouse is the service I intended to mention in my comment. They manufacture archival prints and canvases with framing options. They also make wall clings and t shirts.
If you want mugs and Iphone cases, I recommend either Printful or Merchify. Merchify prints “premium posters”, but nothing listed as “archival”.
If not archival it is not art, it is just fun-art. crafty.
Here is a techie question – what do you think of Joomla? I am building a web app using that. My first time with Joomla. It is not bad, but definitely for techies. I was thinking of using it for my art website. Any experience with that? And then my next question is about printers. Any recommendations besides PrintHouse? Do any of these printers have plugins for a website? Is that how it works? Or do I have to submit an order myself every time I get an order on my site?
Having used Joomla for many years, I can tell you it is quite similar in scope and difficulty to WordPress. Both are fairly easy to master, yet each has a slightly different workflow and both reply on 3rd party developers for their widgets, plugins, components, etc.
The problem with both of these CMS solutions is the time required to keep them up to date – including the core, all 3rd party apps and your template – and to make sure everything is playing nicely together. If you have a ‘web guy or gal, no problem… but if you’re a one-man-show, like many of us, you can’t afford to spend a lot of time keeping your website up and running.
(FYI, I am using Zenfolio now and really do not like it. I found this while looking for better solutions.)
MeanderingRose Joomla is very complicated for non-techies. Setting everything up can be enormously time-consuming and it’s really intended for a diverse inventory of thousands of products. PrintHouse is actually a plugin for Shopify and orders go automatically to them. You can find other Print-on-demand resources just by Googling that term along with whatever platform you’re using, i.e., “Print On Demand Plugin for Squarespace”. Hope that helps!
thank you!
I find it interesting to see how the way we sell and shop evolve, even from just a couple years ago when I joined ArtEmpowers.me! I’m still hanging in there with WordPress. Once you have control, it’s hard to let go! For me at least. Thanks for keeping us informed with the latest techie stuff Cory (and Matthew)!
jaimehaneyartist – I am like you about WordPress… especially now that 2017 is out. But, what do you use for the e-commerce solution???
Best,
Thomas
So, I know you used to recommend woocommerce. Is it now off the list and replaced by shopify and squarereader as the recommended ecommerce platforms for artists who use wordpress? Thanks,
Chris
ChrisBlevins Chris, I still recommend WordPress & Woocommerce together. They fulfill different objectives. WP & Woocommerce ultimately give you more control, but you need to be willing to learn to use it. Shopify makes running a website easier, but at a slightly higher cost and less control.
woocommerce has been nothing but a headache for me. I just felt bad handing over a woocommerce site to a client. Too complicated and a lot of issues when you are updating.
Things just dont work right and the extra money spent on a better ecommerce solution is worth it.
mathewclayfreeman, thanks for checking out my site!
I use weebly. I’ve got my own domain & having been running mine for about 4 years through them. They have one of those integrated shopping systems (which for me goes straight to my paypal account) While I’ve had my issues with them (and have not been thrilled by their customer support) the interface is very easy so I can keep it updated.
I use weebly too, and have had excellent customer service. I pay for secure dsl but am disappointed that there is no badge provided. Also they are dragging their feet on fixing a bug where you can only cross link the first 25 images to the e-commerce product listing. My biggest beef is the that the storefront page crops my images, and because of the linking issues I am hesitant to drag and drop a blank storefront for uncropped images. More time with tech support is in my future.
Greetings,
Nice article but I find this excerpt hard to digest – “but for the most part, SEO is not something that most artists need to make a priority” SEO is a priority for anyone that wants to be seen and sell online. More and more artists are flocking to the Internet and w/out good SEO your artwork/website/posts will be buried or not indexed. Just my opinion…
Cheers
Thanks for the comment Robert. While I do agree that in general, search engine traffic is important, it’s been my experience that unless an artist has a very specific niche which they can own, search traffic is very, very difficult to come by. It’s a good idea to have the best practices in on-page SEO in place (Title tags, meta descriptions, etc which we talk about in this post), but the rest is too much for too little return.
The search results are mostly dominated by the big online galleries like Fine Art America, Saatchi, and Artsy. They have resources that an individual artist just cannot access.
In my opinion, it’s best to use best practices for on-page structure, and focus on other aspects of marketing.
note: my website is temporarily offline until I decide next steps.
Cory I also posted on your facebook. I have been using a service designed by and catered to Artists called Other People’s Pixels. My main frustration is the limitations of it being template based, though they have loads of options with artists in mind. the plus side is they deal with all the behind the scenes things that need you to have that SEO. You can have a Paypal button that is USD only. So if you are an international artist like myself (Canadian) they say one can just put a paypal link so buyers can buy in your own currency via that link. I just learned that today. One can link to any e-commerce site with them to if you want sell via Shopify etc. there is a blog option, an option to add you tube links if you do you tube videos. So lots of plusses to them. I just wish I had more control over layout. They are also optimized for tablets and smartphones. about $16.99 US which hovers around $22 Canadian per month. They your domain is locked into them for a period of time until that expires, then you can purchase your domain and take it to a new host if you wish or just continue with them. What do you think Cory?
what are your thoughts on volusion?..I am looking at shopify and volusion seems to be comparable.
Volusion is very similar but if you look at the themes, only 23 of the 116 templates are responsive. 6 of them are free then the rest are over $800.
You need a responsive site! The prices on volusion are crazy.
Im not sure what shopifys number of responsive themes are but its way more. Also you are paying up to $180 which is way cheaper, and there are some amazing free ones to.
Your comment about SEO for shopify “Their URL structures are less than ideal for search engine effectiveness, but for the most part, SEO is not something that most artists need to make a priority.” Is completely wrong
You can manually change the page title, meta description, and url in shopify. I have no idea why you would say its less then ideal.
I liked squarespace for a basic website but it just seems like the ecommerce was just an after thought. Which it was, definitely not on the same level as shopify.
As for wordpress, I did a few ecommerce sites on it and really disliked it. Development time was a lot longer then I expected to try and get plugins to work right. Then you update wordpress and a lot of your plugins to make it work right like paypal express get broken. It’s just a headache for the client after the website is handed over to them.
I love wordpress as a blog and website but not ecommerce
Jonathan, I agree that Squarespace’s ecommerce is less ideal than Shopify. WordPress ecommerce can be great, but is often done poorly. Still, for those with design chops and a desire to do it themselves, WordPress is a great alternative.
It’s been a while since I looked at Shopify (this post is a year old), but as I remember it, the actual url structure buries ecommerce items several sub-folders deep, which is less than ideal for individual products to show up in search. But it’s a small quibble.
so would it help then to just put a link to shopify within your website that may be hosted otherwise? and to use all the social media marketing options to get people there?
Cory,
At the moment I am using Zenfolio but I don’t use their ecommerce option. I am thinking of looking into Shopify and was wondering if there are safeguards in place so no one can right click and download a photo?
Thanks
Appreciate the conversation so much as I was just trying to decide between the main 3 mentioned. Thank you.
I would urge people trying to build a serious business not to choose shopify.
Shopify is great until you have a problem. Their support is none existant. They are not very pro business, for example they are quick to disable your account if a payment method fails. Unlike other sites which will block admin access, shopify take your site offline. Better not lose your card associated with your shopify otherwise when your card gets cancelled your site will go offline!!!! Support will not help you either!
This can destroy all your hard work on SEO, upset customers and cause you to lose money.
Alberto, if you were paying me for a service and payment failed to go through, I would cut off your service as well.
there are many reasons a credit card might not go through. If it’s been compromised. If you have had a paypal claim that’s locked up funds, working on narrow margins. If Shopify takes down your website b/c one credit card charge didn’t go through that’s a serious problem/consideration for anyone investing a lot of time using their product.
I had issues with Shopify and their Shopify experts. Got out. I looked into Portfoliobox. Nice and easy. good looking websites. I chose to go with WordPress. Fran
Am about to jump into selling online, and you’ve convinced me that I must have my own website. Tech is tough for me; I’m learning, but need help. Would you recommend SquareSpace?
Absent from your analysis is any consideration of the stability of these companies. When you get a Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly website, you throwing your fortunes together with these companies. If they go out of business, raise their prices, or decide on going in a different direction, you are stuck. WordPress, on the other hand, is open source software, used by millions of people. Host it at Amazon web services or Godaddy and its not likely to go away. Moreover, if your hosting service goes away, you can move the site to another hosting service. Too technical a job for most artists, but better than starting over.
Hi Brian, we have addressed digital sharecropping in several other posts on this blog. While I agree that WordPress or other custom built solutions offer the most flexibility and control, they are far too complex for non-coding folks, which includes many artists.
Does anyone have any experience with these personal website’s you can create from the FineArtAmerica website? I also have a WordPress site I want to take down and start from scratch new.
I was with them but disliked the fact that people can jump to any of their other artist websites and migrate from looking at yours. I also received a great deal of scam emails through their site.
And what about the option of embedding a Shopify store within a Squarespace site? Supposedly this is what Ann Rea uses. I don’t have ecommerce yet but am considering this option. Has anyone tried it?
Chris, I know this is a very late answer to your question, but I do have a Squarespace site, and I’m using the Shopify buy button. I tried moving to a Shopify site, but I can’t get their templates to look as nice, and you just don’t have the design control that you do with Squarespace. Also, I actually prefer the way their Lite plan’s buy button coordinates with my site, instead of the way it looks with the Shopify free templates.
The problem is that you have to set up your category pages and separate sales pages all by yourself – no automation. But after spending three days trying to get a Shopify theme to look the way I want it, I’m going back to Squarespace. No marketing yet, so I still don’t know how it will work out.
Great dialogue Cory! Looking forward to your evaluation and possible instruction for additional platforms in the future!
Cory,
I really appreciate all the information on this subject as I’m in the process of revising my site. The url is a link to the site in Fineartamerica. The problem that I have had is being buried in the group of 7000 artists so the chances of anyone viewing my art is rare to say the least.
I won’t bore you or all these great people with my problems but to say that I have decided to break my art down to specific sites based on the category of the art so I will be building 12 sites. Call me crazy but I believe that buyers get confused by all the selections.
Tks again for sharing this info.
Pachek
Please don’t build 12 websites. Just build one with some good organization. You’ll be better off and save a ton of work.
Zaxaa is an interesting platform that I’m considering for physical as well as digital products
I personally would give Shopify 4 stars (minus 1 star for the increased prices), I’ve been using it for almost a year now, and I’m not disappointed. It’s easy to navigate, my website is working with no lags, and I love the ‘collections’ option (here for example http://www.webbuildersguide.com/website-builders-reviews/shopify-review/). It is organized and well-constructed, and a great variant of a website builder.
Some sites like FASO do email marketing. That is, they send email to their subscribers when art is first published. Shopify does not do this. Does this option make FASO a better choice for artists? I am trying to choose my website provider. I am currently using FAA which has proved to be the wrong thing.
I am a shopify user. The site is great.
A few things to consider: You’ll have to buy or find a third party app if you want any sort of gallery. It’s just not possible to create a gallery (images without a price associate with the mage) in shopify itself because everything is a store.
Price: The most basic store is $348 per year. If you’re an artist just starting out selling (without a big following that’s going to buy a ton of your work) that can feel like a lot. However I’ve never had a problem with the store and whenever I’ve emailed the help department, they’ve always been very responsive.
It’s true that Squarespace templates do look great off the peg.
However, it’s really really bad for SEO. I previously used the platform and suffered from duplicate H1 tags. These tags make Google think you have multiple pages about the same topic which is not good if you want to rank online.
You might say that artists don’t need good SEO, but I personally believe that all artists want to be discovered and that search opportunities provide that opportunity. Surely, an article about the top ten galleries in London will bring qualified traffic to your site?
I also believe that using a platform like Shopify ultimately makes you a house renter rather than a land owner. If Shopify change the rules, you can’t easily leave their platform. With WordPress you can simply install a plug-in and export your whole site to another hosting company. Sure WordPress is more work — but it also provides more power in the end.
If you can spare the time I would consider look at WordPress and Elementor(page builder). I think these are a great combination — you can get a website that looks as good as Squarespace but with none of the downsides.
I am a painter with my website already set up, however I have never sold online bc of the headache of shipping and pricing of shipping. What would you suggest if I want to pay someone else to sell my art/prints etc so I can solely create ? I paint Large size pieces on wood with wood frames etc.. so I have been stumped on what to do as far as online selling goes. Can you give me advice please ?!? My site is jodylawrence.crevado.com if that helps with a visual idea! Thank you!!
Jody
Hi Jody,
I don’t know if you have found a solution but for original art I have been pleased with Saatchiart.com. When you create your listing you give the dimensions and weight, they calculate the shipping cost, adding this to your price you are selling the piece for and when it sells they provide the shipping label.
May I ask which website builder or hosted solution is Amanda using right now?